London – World Rugby’s controversial plan for a Nations Championship suffered a setback when England’s Rugby Football Union said on Tuesday the new format carried a potentially “catastrophic” risk which they were not prepared to accept.

World rugby chiefs want to launch a new cross-hemisphere contest in 2022, in which the winners of the Six Nations would face off against the top team from an expanded, six-team Rugby Championship in an end-of-year final. The proposed format could also include relegation from the Six Nations, probably, given the competition structure, for two years.

The plans include three divisions and promotion and relegation. The competition would be backed by a record commercial partnership with nearly £5 billion ($6.6 billion) of investment.

But some European unions are reportedly unconvinced by the proposals.

The English RFU’s acting chief executive Nigel Melville warned of the cost of relegation from the lucrative Six Nations – the annual northern hemisphere competition.

In a comment that appeared to refer to reports that dropping to a second-tier competition, might force the sale of the national stadium, Twickenham, he said the RFU would not allow ownership of its 82,000-capacity ground to be endangered.

“I think we make sure it doesn’t arise,” he said. “That solves that problem. You just don’t want to get into a situation where you’re making decisions like that.

“For us it could be catastrophic being relegated, commercially. To be relegated, the catastrophe isn’t just the team being relegated, it’s our ability to fund the game as a governing body in England.

“Can we fund the community game in England to the level we do now if we don’t have the revenues we have?

“And on the point of promotion and relegation, there’s no promotion and relegation in a Lions year and there’s no tournament in a World Cup year.

“So when you’re relegated, you’re relegated for two years, not one. It’s not quite up and down, one season on the naughty step and go back up, it’s actually two years and that could be a disaster for people.”

Having unusually elevated levels of the hormone – known to boost muscle strength and bone mass – is not enough to make a world-class athlete like double Olympic champion Semenya, who has dominated the women’s 800 metres over the last decade, they argued.

The record for that distance was set in 1983 by a Czech runner Jarmila Kratochvilova, who has long been dogged by accusations of doping.

“To become a great athlete requires at least 10 000 hours of training, focus, discipline, timing, coaching, equipment, and strategy,” lead author Cara Tannenbaum, scientific director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, told AFP.

“If we exclude women who have high testosterone levels from track events, will we then decide to exclude men who are extraordinarily tall from playing basketball?” she asked rhetorically.

“It would be unscientific to make decisions on exclusion for men or women based on a single genetic factor alone.”

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is seeking to force so-called “hyperandrogenic” athletes or those with “differences of sexual development” (DSD) to seek treatment to lower their testosterone levels below a prescribed amount if they wish to continue competing as women.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport is set to rule on capping testosterone levels in women athletes at five nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) of blood. On Thursday, the court put back the likely date of its decision “until the end of April” because both sides had filed additional material since the hearing in February. 

In non-athletes, testosterone concentrations typically range between 9 and 31 nmol/L for boys and men, and from 0.4 to 2 nmol/L in girls and women, Tannenbaum noted.

But at least one study of elite track and field athletes tested after competition showed a far smaller gap – and even some overlap – between women and men, she pointed out.

For this and other reasons, setting a limit of 5 nmol/L was “arbitrary” and discriminatory, she wrote in the BMJ, a medical journal.

Semenya’s testosterone levels are not publically known.

But from 2011 to 2015, she took hormone suppressants to bring her below a 10 nmol/L limit imposed during those years, and would clearly need to do the same if the lower threshold were validated.

During that five-year period, her best times in the 800m were a second or two slower than before and after. 

The athletics world championships in Doha start on September 28.

Responding to Tannenbaum’s editorial, the IAAF insisted that the 5 nmol/L limit “is not ‘arbitrary'”.

“Rather, it is based on a comprehensive survey of all reliable reported data,” athletics’ governing body told AFP. 

In 2017, the British Journal of Sports Medicine study – commissioned by the IAAF – showed that women with higher testosterone levels turned in marginally better performances in the hammer throw, the pole vault, the 400m hurdles, as well as the 400m and 800m events. 

Other experts support the IAAF ruling, saying it is justified on biological grounds.

“A profound increase in testosterone levels (at puberty) mediates not only male genital development but also greater muscle strength and skeletal growth compared with the female which is long lasting into young adulthood,” said Ieuan Hughes, a paediatric endocrinologist and emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge.

These are impacts “which sports physiologists recognise to be advantageous in highly competitive events,” he said in written comment.

Hughes challenged the accuracy of the study cited by Tannenbaum showing a male-female overlap in testosterone levels among top-level athletes, chalking up the results to “outliers”. 

“Even the lowest testosterone value in men is four to five times greater than the highest value in the female range,” he said.

Chris Cooper, an emeritus professor of biochemistry in the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences at the University of Essex, suggested “the current evidence is as good as we are going to get that both natural and doped testosterone levels enhance female sports performance”.

Cooper pointed out that a “special protected space for female sport” exists because there would otherwise be “no female winners” in most events.

Whether the IAAF rule is fair or “ethically right”, however, is a separate question, he suggested.

No matter how the CAS decide, a subset of women athletes will no doubt decry the decision as unjust.

Cape Town – The Proteas squad for the 2019 World Cup is largely settled. 

The captain and coach will always leave the door slightly open for other players, but reading between the lines it is clear that almost all 15 names have been decided on. 

There is one exception, though, and Hashim Amla’s participation at the World Cup remains uncertain. 

His ODI record is superb – he averages almost 50 at a strike rate of almost 90 – but Amla has been sidelined over the past few weeks because of personal circumstances. 

With his father critically ill, the 35-year-old has put his World Cup charge on ice, and understandably so. 

The problem is that Amla been struggling to find consistently good form for several months now. The five-match ODI series against Sri Lanka would have been the perfect opportunity to assess what kind of touch he was in, but he did not feature at all.  

Absent from the squad for the upcoming three T20s against Sri Lanka too, Amla will not wear a Proteas strip again before the World Cup. 

It leaves coach Ottis Gibson, skipper Faf du Plessis and the Proteas selectors with much to consider. 

While Reeza Hendricks appeared to be next in line to the opening slot in Amla’s absence, Aiden Markram seems to have now muscled his way in following a superb run of form in the Momentum One Day Cup and then a 67* at the top of the order in the 5th ODI against Sri Lanka on Saturday. 

If Amla is left out of the World Cup squad, it is a decision that will almost certainly ruffle feathers in the South African cricket community. 

“You’d want to pick on form, but if there is no form to go with then you have to look at reputation I guess,” Gibson told media in Cape Town on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s first T20I at Newlands.

“That’s something that we will have to look at, obviously with regards to Hash, because he has not played any cricket for a long time now because of his family situation.

“When we sit down to discuss the team that will be one of the things we have to consider.”

Amla could potentially play the remainder of the One Day Cup with the Cape Cobras – they have two pool fixtures remaining – while there is also the domestic T20 competition before the World Cup. 

It may not be international cricket, but runs domestically will at least give the selectors some reassurance that Amla is batting at the level he needs to. 

The squad for the first T20I is the same as the ODI squad that finished the series against Sri Lanka, but it will change significantly for the second and third T20Is at Centurion and the Wanderers. 

One name that stands out in that second squad is Chris Morris.

With Dwaine Pretorius and Andile Phehlukwayo the front-runners to be selected as the specialist World Cup allrounders, Morris looks to be completely out of the running. 

But, speaking on Monday, Gibson suggested that there was always a chance for somebody to use the T20 series against Sri Lanka to make one last play at the World Cup.

“I’m not too sure about the IPL but playing international T20s you will always have an opportunity,” he said.

“We have always looked at it like a Ryder Cup selection where the Ryder Cup captain has a wildcard pick.

“There is still an opportunity and if somebody comes and does something unbelievable within the next couple of games, then there is still an opportunity for the selectors to consider that person.”

Tuesday’s first T20I starts at 18:00.